


The Brimming Wave and the Degrading Ecstasy

by lulahbelle



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:39:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lulahbelle/pseuds/lulahbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set in 1909 but not quite historically accurate. I think I am right in saying that George Mallory graduated from university in 1909, and he was indeed infatuated with James Strachey during this summer too, but Rupert Brooke didn't come to stay at the Grantchester Orchard (which was above the Grantchester Tea Rooms) and then the Vicarage (which was right next door) until he was through with uni, which I believe would have been summer of 1910.</p><p>I had to skew the dates a little because I couldn't work a way in which Mallory would have been in England in the summer of 1910, as it seems he was in France and climbing and things in the gap he took before he took work as a school master at Charterhouse.</p><p>The Noel spoken of is Noel Olivier, awesome woman - girl at the time, eventual doctor and cousin to Lawrence Olivier theee eventual aktor xtrordinaire, and a female friend of Brooke's who he was greatly enamoured of for much of his life, although not in an entirely reciprocated manner it has to be said.</p><p>This is almost entirely fictional and so some characteristics I have just made up/theorised upon, so I cannot guarantee that it will be entirely in character but it seems true to the impression I've formed of them both from reading almost everything written about either of them.</p><p>There is a bit of perspective shifting, I wanted to have this first part mostly from Mallory's POV then slowly switch to Brooke's, don't think it's confusing.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. The brimming wave

**Author's Note:**

> Set in 1909 but not quite historically accurate. I think I am right in saying that George Mallory graduated from university in 1909, and he was indeed infatuated with James Strachey during this summer too, but Rupert Brooke didn't come to stay at the Grantchester Orchard (which was above the Grantchester Tea Rooms) and then the Vicarage (which was right next door) until he was through with uni, which I believe would have been summer of 1910.
> 
> I had to skew the dates a little because I couldn't work a way in which Mallory would have been in England in the summer of 1910, as it seems he was in France and climbing and things in the gap he took before he took work as a school master at Charterhouse.
> 
> The Noel spoken of is Noel Olivier, awesome woman - girl at the time, eventual doctor and cousin to Lawrence Olivier theee eventual aktor xtrordinaire, and a female friend of Brooke's who he was greatly enamoured of for much of his life, although not in an entirely reciprocated manner it has to be said.
> 
> This is almost entirely fictional and so some characteristics I have just made up/theorised upon, so I cannot guarantee that it will be entirely in character but it seems true to the impression I've formed of them both from reading almost everything written about either of them.
> 
> There is a bit of perspective shifting, I wanted to have this first part mostly from Mallory's POV then slowly switch to Brooke's, don't think it's confusing.

Trading stuffy study halls for snowy scenery, George Mallory spent the first few weeks of summer after his university finals climbing in the mountain ranges of Snowdonia. He enjoyed it exceptionally. Being free of education - finally a man, seemed to infuse his climbing with a newly intense sense of independence. Out on the rocks he had made his own paths with greater inner confidence - forging ahead and improving in ways that some of the others were unwilling or unable to, and the pleasure this self reliance gave him warmed him deeply even when the atmospheric temperature around him dropped.

All had to end though, so now, after a horrendous itinery of rural buses, he was in Cardiff, wilting in the heat of the station, awaiting a train to London that would take him back to his family home and expectant parents.

He had no great desire to get there.

For years now he had lived alone in Cambridge, away from his mother's indifferent possessiveness and his father's bookishness, and now, high on his freedom in the mountains, he had no impelling nostalgia for the restrictions of childhood again.

It would be an unappealing return for another reason, as he had discovered that he had been turned down for both of the two school master posts to which he had applied before leaving for Wales. Disappointed, despite his entire disinterest in being a teacher, he had no immediate wish to inform his father of the outcome. Nor did George particularly wish to confess to his father his continuing failure to develop any concrete ideas as to what he actually _did_ want to do as a job for the rest of his life.

George considered it greatly unjust that a man like his father, who had found his proper place in the world branded on his heart at a precociously young age, was so judgmental about his lack of progress in this area. George was a very different sort of man to him, one who found his own heart too frequently at odds with any notion of propriety to ever listen to it in determining the living of his life and without its help what real hope did George have of deciding.

Desperate to escape these issues, George made a spontaneous last minute change of plans.

He wouldn't go home immediately. When he got to London he would send his things home ahead of him and get the train down to Cambridge instead. Rupert Brooke, a friend who still resided there, had repeatedly suggested he come stay with him for a few days so now he would finally take him up on it.

From the station he sent two telegrams, one to his mother another to Brooke to inform them of his plan.  
_

Rupert Brooke was a university friend, of a few years standing. Of different age, in different years and different colleges, it wasn't guaranteed that they would have met, if not for the chain of mutual admirers that fate had assembled between them.

By the beneficence of his tutor AC Benson, George had dined regularly with the popular under librarian and character about Cambridge, Charles Sayles. When, at the start of George's second year, Rupert joined the university, with his golden hair, immense physical beauty and literary ability, he was immediately attractive to all, and dutifully struck dumb with desire Charlie had invited him along to one of these suppers.

There George had met him, and George was glad he had, for he found he rather liked Rupert. He had found the 'Apollo' to be a surprisingly hearty fellow, laid with such wit and obvious common sense that he seemed to have entirely forgotten his own good looks. Apparently by nature not one to wallow in the lazy, shallow adoration he received - beyond that which was basically polite, Rupert seemed to be always working, writing endlessly, creating poetical works, attending political meetings, desperate to establish a presence for himself away from the visual sphere.

Rupert had ambition and enthusiasm in swathes regarding his writing, awing George who had always felt quite aimless beside him. It was with good cause too to George's mind, for he enjoyed Rupert's poetry, perhaps the most of all of their friend's writings - even those who had been published.

Despite his wishes George could not say he was immune to his looks either.

He found Rupert terribly beautiful just as the rest did in fact finding his loveliness to be even more extreme than all the observers had claimed for him. Rupert was the sort of good looking that George most admired, a simple beauty of components, rarely to be seen with adornment of any kind by way of dress, Rupert's attractiveness was natural, basic and true.

Of course Rupert's own personal characteristics were not the only reason George was glad to have met him.

Not making his acquaintance should have meant no James Strachey, and although George wondered whether that would have been for the best given the insincere, trifling nature of James' affection, George knew that for good or ill James was his great passion, and now that his heart had started for him, he could never think so sensibly on him.

George had written the damnable creature several times whilst he was away. No replies. They had rather quarreled the last time they had been together, James irritated by George's demands for closeness and although they had seemingly made up by the time George left James' house for the mountains, George would have preferred to have had this good feeling between them confirmed by regular correspondence.

James did not want though, George wanted, especially whilst in the mountains.

At the first camp there, surrounded by ice, under the glow of sunrise, he'd yearned to feel James near him, his always too warm breath flushing his face, his firm hands rolling over the tender flesh of his flank, stroking him. Independence blending with the intimate, sight combining with touch, opposed, separate sensations combining to overwhelm in a gigantic swoon, slaying his stoic, held in nature until he was loose, free, open.

This singular occasion of silent longing for James had grown from there to a ritual observance, until every time he drank in some wondrous sight in the physical world, he closed his eyes briefly and thought of James touching him.

It was so rigorously observed and intent that his climbing companions noticed it, but he breathed not a word of explanation for it. George imagined they thought he was praying, they being unaware that he hadn't done that with his eyes closed since he was a boy of 8, when his father - his vicar, had opened the empty vestry one morning and found him already there with his head bowed and his eyes tightly closed.

His father, especially pleased by his piousness, had for years after wondered aloud if his eldest son would one day follow him into the world of religion.

His father seemed less to notice or care that George had had to climb a nearby tree to get into a carelessly left open window to gain access to the vestry during the night, nor to make much of the fact that his son climbed anything and everything he could.

George's father always seemed to take less notice of the things that were truly important and interesting to his son, preferring to draw simple, convenient conclusions.

George often found he wanted nothing to do with the things his father earnestly desired for him and so he had never prayed with such observable intensity ever again.

Touch. James had touched him.

Sometimes George thought there was something wrong with his body, for he did ache so for the loss of touch when he was used to it - even as his body seemed, insensitive - seldom registering any real memory of aches accumulated from climbing. George liked to think his mind was just efficient. Wiping away all the pain of his body, whilst leaving that which was connected with happiness, with the rush of an orgasm, behind for his perusal.

Of course it was possible that he was self indulgently obsessed with his own pleasure, but George had long since become convinced that though he may not approve of that, the self was all he ever had, so why not indulge it as much as you could?  
_

Rupert was still at Cambridge, his final year ahead in the autumn, and for now was spending his summer vac at the Grantchester Orchards. Down where the River Cam became the Granta, this was a small inn attached to a tea room much frequented by students from the university in term time. Rupert was staying there alone, accompanied every so often by whoever of his university acquaintances he could tempt from their family homes. George had heard from James that the Olivier sisters were there most weekends. George suspected, but daren't ask, lest he receive another lecture about the energy wasted by jealousy, that James himself was there alot too.

Perhaps he would be there when he arrived George thought - although George doubted he would consent to remain in any place once he knew he was coming, he did hope so, for he wanted him.

Mostly George wanted to touch and be touched with such a fury that it gave him a headache. His need for physicality stirred every thought to the gutter, even as his eyes turned over the looks of the two radiant young women he was lucky enough to share his London to Cambridge train carriage with.

They were two girls together, friends? Sisters?

One looked to him boldly, eyes like water, face clear and open and pale white, hair light blonde like his sister's had been once, and as his eyes traveled over her thin white neck and studied the inanimate grace of the ivory fingers held in her lap, the firm brace of her corseted midsection, he did so long with peculiar strength to crush himself against her, to be clouded by her scent, lost in the mists of it, to turn his lips to her face, such that he had to turn away and watch the rolling slopes of the country slide past his window instead of regarding her again, not feeling he could trust his unruly thoughts otherwise.  
_

He got off a few steps later, earlier than he had intended - though it would have been wiser to stay on until Cambridge if one wanted to get to Rupert's by the time he said he would.

He didn't look back at the girl as he left the carriage, wanting desperately to, feeling her eyes upon him, admiring him too even perhaps, but unable to encourage it, full of disgust with himself for how he had leapt to imagining himself touching her.

His lust at times felt immorally vast to him.

Fantasies of talking to her would have been so much more decent in the circumstances, something he had already told himself when he had had such thoughts about women in the past, why now would his head still not comply.

He had now to walk to Grantchester.

It was a swelteringly hot day turned into a pleasant evening and the walk was nice, he had done a section of it several times with fellow students as an undergrad when heading to the tea rooms from the college.  
_

It was 7PM by the time George arrived and the sky over Cambridgeshire was just darkening. He had sent the largest of his bags ahead to his parents and kept all his fixings in a small knapsack. He approached the entrance to the Grantchester tea room/Orchard inn, which he had attended many times, from the line of colossal trees at the back of the estate.  
There was not a breeze in the air and his walk had covered him in an almost irritating heat, but he calmed at once when he saw, sail like against the continuous dark sea of lawn, Rupert's shirt.

Peculiar given the advanced hour, but Rupert was outside, sat in a deckchair, reading, and writing something.

Unseen in the bushes, George took in the grey blue of his arms and face and that fabled hair of his, dulled beyond all the loveliness that would leap out to the eyes the moment it was beneath the slightest wash of light. The temptation to stop still there, to just watch Rupert, silently, unobserved, entirely unobtrusive, occurred strongly to George's nature, but did not last for more than a second in viability before he realised that Rupert was looking right up at him.

Of course Rupert didn't know it was him he was looking at, rather he was looking at the movement of the bushes and trees that George had caused, without a real awareness that it was he who had caused them.

George imagined that as he exited the gathered trees in the dark he would seem like a spectre to Rupert, and so greatly considered emerging from the trees moaning like some displaced soul, searching the earth for forgiveness as a joke. At the same moment lacking confidence in his ability to do such an impersonation the slightest dramatic justice he instead slipped out barely, branches attaching themselves to his back.

Rupert leapt at once to his feet, arms outstretched to George's arms, more in acted welcome than in any desire to make physical contact with him. George, understanding this, neatly stopped before Rupert could reach him.

"George! Weren't you supposed to have arrived a while ago?"

George Mallory's face creased into a tight look of shame, his eyes becoming quite slim.

“Yes. I'm ever so sorry. I got off the train years before I ought to have.”

Mallory paused at that, finally taking in the scene before him. Brooke had a small table next to his chair that was cluttered with papers - he didn't pause before emitting judgement.

“You're working? In the dark? Won't that hurt your eyes?”

Rupert's annoyance was instant.

“George don't fuss. If it does anything to my sight it will surely improve it.” They paused, allowing them both the chance to swallow Rupert's very cavalier and unbelievable assertion.

"Were you writing poetry?"

Ever since George had discovered that Rupert wrote verse, he had been rather obsessed with it.

"No. Swedish translations. Work. I've heard money is the fashionable thing nowadays."

George smiled and said. “I presume we're not alone.”

Rupert's lodgings were always a popular congregation point for his friends, George could see why, he always picked nice places and then tried his hardest to accommodate anyone with the food they might want. Rupert was good. This realisation made George most sad that he had eschewed him for so long.

Feeling awkward to stand whilst he was vetted by George, Rupert again sat down by his work.

“Afraid we are. Until tomorrow when an Olivier or two may arrive.”

George replied.

“Ah.” And it seemed that this was all he had to say.

They were quiet a goodly second and George fetched a chair and joined him. This whole quietness alone made Rupert regret his decision to invite him. It seemed fearfully as though neither of them had the slightest amount to say to one another.

“So why did you leave the train if you knew you hadn't arrived?” Rupert's boredom made him intently critical.

"I wanted to walk up the Cam. Lovely country, just lovely. Trees centuries old. I just slightly underestimated how long it would take to get here again. I'm glad I got here eventually, this seems like an ideal place to stay. I didn't really think of that before, you're really too clever to have chosen it, I wish now that I'd visited sooner.”

“Well it was your person that was waylaid, not your invitation."

“Yes I'm most sorry, I've had to go climbing a lot. In fact I just got back from Snowdonia.” George said this in the hopes that Rupert might seize some interest in the matter, but he knew already the response that he would draw.

“I don't know why you types don't just look at it from the ground.”

“I do. It's just that then I look at it from above as well. If you think about it Rupert it's really more thorough to do that, and if you are to do these things hadn't you better be thorough?”

There was something of prissy femininity in his admonishing use of Rupert's name, something that smacked of a maiden aunt, and that seemed a certain charm in someone as stridently built - from rowing and climbing and other sports as George was, it made Rupert laugh out loud.

“Well George, I would say that's more of a philosophical debate than a debate about climbing.”

George smiled along too, and yet at the same time a part of him was concerned by the possibility that his friend was mocking him. Rather than being disagreeable he attempted to ignore this and carried on.

“It's the air up there. Oh Rupert you understand the appeals of unfettered air more than anyone, after all that's one of the chief joys of this place. You should come climbing with us at some point.”

“I would have nothing to say to the sorts of men who climb. No offense.”

“What of the ladies?”

George had been under the impression that Rupert was rather a whizz with the fairer sex ever since the first time he had visited Grantchester with James, and seen The Olivier sisters and Gwen Darwin seated at the foot of Rupert's chair on the lawn. Of course George, like a few other people, had neglected to reflect that this had been not because the women were worshiping at his feet, but simply because there were no other chairs and Rupert who was practically living at the place even in those days before he actually was, had gotten there before the ladies and being against many accepted values did not agree with treating women differently than men, even on the level of excess concern.

“Ladies? Even worse. But surely such abominable creatures don't exist.” Rupert laughed, but only because his disgust was genuine enough to make him nervous.

“I have testimony that they do. I just spent a mighty climb with one called Cottie. I think she may come to be a friend.”

“Oh Georgette. You've discovered women?” Rupert smiled a wide smile that he knew to be boyishly charming, hoping to lead George away from suspecting the fact that he compiled everything he said for later discussion with James.

“No, they were there before I was. I'm not a colonialist.”  
Rupert liked this comment, it was clever, if only George were always that clever, if only he were that way outside of speech.

"How on earth did it come about?"

“To be honest it's confusing to me really, I have nothing to say to women.”

“I'm beginning to believe it's more about doing than saying.”

“I have even less to do with them.” George said, thinking explicitly of the fair creature on the train.

“AC Benson will be pleased. Chap never did like rivals.”

George was tremendously touchy about anyone mentioning the fact that Benson had a pash on him, because George was the sort of serious fellow who felt guilty at eliciting such feelings from others when he could not return them.

“Rupert! You know your impression of his esteem for me is spiteful.”

Rupert continued to make fun of him, deep in his own amusement.

“Lucky Charlie Sayles.”

For it was a widely known fact that Charles was carnally interested in George too.

George frowned deeply, he clearly felt bad.

Rupert found him cherishable when he was like this.

That he was so serious about everything reflected an out of touchness with the shallowness of men about Cambridge nowadays that was very attractive. There was something of the eternal, unworldly virgin about dear George, no matter what crossed his path, and something resolute in him that refused to feel the slightest shame about it.

Rupert felt recognition in him, he should behave like it too if there were the slightest risk he might be believed as being as genuinely earnest as he sadly was.

Aware that Rupert was not responding to his entreaties George replied in uncharacteristically viscious voice.

“Yes at least Charlie is lucky until he learns of you and Noel.”

George was making some flawed attempt to remind Rupert that it wasn't just he who Charles Sayles in particular had in his amourous sights. After all Sayles regularly told Brooke to his face just how beautiful he found him. Rupert felt the same eternal embarrassment at being exposed as a man subject to the tawdry emotions of others as George was, but he reacted to this with better defenses.

It was such that he ignored his uneasy feelings and struck out.

“And how do you know about Noel and I George?”

“James. Of course. He never stops uttering your name.”

George smiled a little as he said this, as if recalling the vivacity of James' voice, when all he really registered was a cold hard truth twisting itself into him. That although he loved James, although he wanted him, James loved Rupert through and through and always would, and there was nothing one could do to prevent the end when it came, even if it hadn't already.

Rupert laughed in his louche way.

“Dear. I've told him he must stop doing that.”

George didn't really mind losing to Rupert, Rupert was beautiful and blessed, this much was obvious, but he didn't like his capacity to rate a charming answer higher than a truthful one.

“Don't pretend to be shocked by the extent of his adoration Rupert. Lies don't suit you.”

This struck Rupert intently, it was his eyes as he said it, so full of sorrow, genuine and instant, as if bearing the brunt of all the woe in the world. Rupert believed that George would never profess a faith in him that he didn't feel and at once believed in the ultimate truth of his own goodness.

“Oh I know, but what am I to do? You know I would give anything to transfer his infernal feelings over to you if I could. You're the best man I've seen James out with in a long while, perhaps ever.”

George took in his expression of regret.

It was genuine, Rupert could feel it welling in his guts, the same persecution from the world that he saw in George's eyes, he picked up his book to break the tension then said impulsively.

“Look, would you help me gather all this bilge up so that we can go inside?”


	2. The degrading ecstasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Uranians were a group of men writing homoerotic/homosexual poetry at the time. Charles Sayle, the underlibrarian at Cambridge, friend of Brooke and Mallory, was a prominent member.
> 
> The Byron poem they quote is of course And Thou are Dead as Young and Fair
> 
> The Virginia spoken of is Virginia Woolf.

Were we really just talking of women out there George? I haven't thought of them in so long. The Uranians almost make one forget one is supposed to offer oneself to one of those awful creatures in the end!"

Rupert had been quite convinced by Charlie Sayle's constant preaching about the innate superiority of bonds between men over those between the sexes. George was not so swayed.

"I think of women often. I would like to be married I think. I should like to have a child, to carry on the name. I mean I know it should be reviled as a stuffy formality but I should like it nonetheless. I'd like to show it the way to grow up, you know, to live right."

"Oh yes I would too. I just feel that one would have to be monstrously suspicious and fearful of any woman who would allow such an event to happen."

Mallory smirked a little at this, but it was clear that he was distracted by his own thoughts. Mists, swirled around a mountain obscured. Rupert wasn't at all curious about the summit. In all honesty he didn't care that much about the insides of his own mind half the time. He would be damned if poor old George Mallory's was any more interesting.

Hoping to break Mallory's inattention, Rupert said, "it's a little theory I've developed with James. He knows a lot about women you know.”

“How strange given his disinterest in them.”

“Oh dear George, James? Disinterested in women? What impression is it that you've formed of him?”

“Only the one he has given me through hours of intimate acquaintance.” George snapped.

George's jealousy bored Rupert, made him hot with anger, but he held onto it, not letting it out at all.

“You know I think I take it back when I said I should like children. I expect I'd find them too much chore and not enough reward. That's why I'm sticking with Noel, absolutely no chance of her being impregnated by a soul.”

Rupert chuckled at the memory of how the girl, so brown, eyes and hair and tinted skin, had exploded in his face, when he, thinking that females liked talk of babies, had casually said that she should bear him a child one day. In the end it had been half of a joke, Rupert had richly enjoyed her anger. Oh the peculiarity of nature. Noel was basically more masculine than James and despite the fact that James would have had Rupert's child in an instant if he could have it was the brash, hard, tom boyish Noel who he insistently lusted after.  
_

Though the temperature outside was falling, it was not receding fast enough, and heat gathered thick in the room. Beneath their shirts they were both sweating desperately.

“The real decision to be taken now, is, are we to have one of those appalling chaste evenings with the Dons where everyone consumes only thimblefuls of brandy and talks incredibly earnestly about the Poor Law, or will we make the effort to ensure I sleep through the girls arrival tomorrow like a log?"

"I am in favour of drunkenness, I haven't been drunk in so long, I swore it off on account of my climbing."

Rupert passed George a bottle he retrieved from an alcove in the wall and asked.

"Would you like to do the honours?"  
_

There was little alcohol left, a few half bottles of wine and one of Brandy, but for two such rare drinkers as Brooke and Mallory it was enough.  
_

"Byron came here do you know?" Rupert said.

"This exact room?" George asked with a laugh.

"Not here exactly. Why if he'd come to this room he would surely have redecorated." Rupert said playing along.

"Oh, Byron. Thou art as dead and fair as aught of mortal birth." George spontaneously quoted, liquid eyes sparkling with mock wistfulness as he gazed to the middle distance in impersonation of an actor on a stage.

"...And charms so soft and form so rare too soon returned to earth. Really George? All the saucy Byron odes you had to choose from, and you selected one about death."

"It's the only one I really know. A boy I was close to at school showed me it when his brother died, to express how he felt. I was rather in love with him, the boy I mean, not the brother. Dead brothers are a ghastly business." George looked at Rupert imploring as he said this, and Rupert knew at once that someone, some, arse, had told George of his own dead brother.

Rupert rejected his sentiment, scowling at it. George didn't really notice, just continued on his own line.

"You know one day people will quote your poems like that Rupert. You're so blessed with your mind."

This seemed to awaken some negative contemplation of himself, for Mallory sighed. Trying to cheer Rupert said,

"Oh come George. You speak as if you're someone who doesn't have his own blessings."

"I have no brain, no words of love, and it's that, that I want most of all things," George sighed and paused a second before he continued, "I have no future at all really right now. I've been turned down for so many jobs. Teaching jobs too, you know, not even jobs that I want. Ah, life, it is so obscene and humiliating."

George almost growled the words, taken by the deep passion within him, that which turned into anger when he was sober - he was forever arguing with other undergrads and their unjust attitudes towards the poor.

Not feeling confident to speak Rupert allowed him to continue.

"When I was climbing all that didn't matter at all. It seems to be whenever I'm still. My thoughts don't pause before they begin to attack me."

Rupert was somewhat confused at how to approach his response. He felt a certain jubilation, for others rarely spoke to him of the secret pain in their hearts, yet how to proceed on the issue confused. What could one say to someone so laid low by melancholy when one privately held some image that they were reserved and broken off, and admired them for these ascribed characteristics.

"A still body opens the mind I think. I suppose that is why Ka knits. We must all burn off our gloomy introspection."

"How do you do it Rupert? You seem so perfectly radiant and light and not in a cruel or insensitive way."

This was too close. Rupert knew he should not answer the question with anything even approaching honesty. The thought of setting a wall between he and Mallory made him feel sad, but he didn't know how he might face him again with the alternative. Before such suffering beauty one shouldn't allow the reality that one had flaws. Then he made the mistake of looking at George, really seeing him, and found a lovely creature, settled into his soul and his being, of this earth, and the reliable sight of him caused something to slip from his lips that he hadn't meant, the truth.

"I walk I suppose."

Yes, Rupert Brooke had many occasions to walk for miles, hating the entire content of his soul and appearance. At once he changed the subject. No abyss would claim him.

"Do you know how I heard of Byron?"

George shook his pretty head.

"Well there's a pool at the end of the lawn out there that's named after him. Apparently the old Devil would bring pretty proteges up from Cambridge every so often to bathe in the nude. I could show you it out there if you want. I usually bathe there myself when the heat is high and the moon is full as it is."

"Is it really such a good idea?" George asked, smiling at him sad, his mood not receding with such speed as Rupert's.

"It really isn't as cold or dark out there as you would think."

"Silly Rupert. I of all people don't mind the cold or the dark. it's my natural place. I was rather thinking that with my drunkenness it might all be a little dangerous."

It was oppressively hot and George's intense, serious demeanor set a heavy atmosphere in the air and Rupert wanted to be away from it, he wanted out and pushed on.

"I consider that as long as one speaks without slurring that one's limbs should be able to take care of themselves."  
George considered then said, "once I've drunken this," in assent, raising the last of the wine in it's bottle to his lips.

His lips stained by the booze slightly he said unconnected.

"Ah I hate the heat. One struggles so hard to keep neat. Then there is sweat. It doesn't take long before one feels quite dirty."  
Rupert's eyes stung with lack of sleep and burned in the heat. Sweat trickled its way out under his arms the sides of his body and his back, he agreed with George, and demanded of him.

"Finish that bottle off now."

George fixed him with a stare, mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Just drink the bottle man. Do as you're told."

"Maybe I should leave it. You know I'm already plenty drunk enough for anything you care to mention."

George's voice was melodious and high, free, charged.

There should have been no returned frisson at the abandon in his words. For as objectively pretty as Rupert could find George, he was not sure he was really the sort that should, or did, inflame him sexwise. At the same time Rupert was unanchored from himself and the fact that George was wanted by all his peers, that having him should compose an achievement in their eyes, allowed him to think upon the prospect of sex.

It was a quiet musing that he almost ignored. Although it did not seem unconnected that he then boisterously, dominantly began to demand of the reluctant creature.

"Drink! Drink! Drink!"

It was insanity.

Alcohol agreed with George, his facial features became mobile and he raised his eyebrows in mock alarm at Rupert's insistence for a second, then tipped the bottle back against his pursed, tiny mouth, emptying it full down his throat. Rupert laughed, he took such joy in the face George pulled. All it had been was a quirk of expression, but from such a cautious, minimal creature as George, it had looked positively debauched.

"Drunkenness was a splendid idea wasn't it George?" Rupert asked.

"And it is the perfect conditions for a bathe. You just have splendid ideas chap," George replied.

Rupert felt a deep pleasure at George's approval. It soothed his stomach and made him smile from somewhere back behind his self scrutiny.  
_

Hollowing cold splashed up Rupert's furnace of a body as he dived in. It sucked his sense out and as he lolled steamily in the water afterwards he was empty, prey to nothing but the scent of the dirty earth. He shouldn't be here he thought, the earth had tried to keep this place, her delight, all to herself, knowing that caused his heart to leap excitedly in his chest.

"It's as cold as death," George said as he shivered violently.

"Yes. Isn't it enthralling!"

"Infinitely. Horribly so. Reminds me of the showers at my old school. It's as if it's flaying your insides in a softly stinging manner. Goodness it's delightful. Soooo delightful."

His voice was not just broken by shivers but slurred. Rupert couldn't help but laugh, George's drunkenness seemed to climb with each moment he spent in the water. Rupert imagined Noel with her comely charms reduced the same way and resolved to make her bathe with him out here.

The moonlight made the sight of George scant, then he sunk his dark head deliberately low into the freezing cold and disappeared. He was forcing himself deep into the worst of it, Rupert thought, familiar with the willingness. This being how they were taught to bear the cold at school - with the least amount of protection and avoidance possible. To experience the worst is to find ways of dealing with it or else expire. Theirs had been a childhood of callus formation.  
When George's face surfaced, it wore considerable amusement but he said nothing.

There was an etiquette concerning bathing. Either one talked the whole way through it, or else one allowed the other the silence of relaxation. With his sudden attack of stoicism George seemed to have selected the quiet route. Rupert let him get on with it and stared up at the shining of the stars through the floppy branches of overhanging trees that had tried to reach the sustenance of the water but failed resting just above it.  
His eyes slipped shut, welcoming the way the coldness emptied all his irritation.

Barely conscious he felt water hit his cheek.

He opened his eyes, and as his vision dizzily shifted around he saw George as he had been before, far from him across the black expanse of nothing that the water was made by the night.

Content to think he imagined the sensation he closed his eyes once more.

Again came the same wet surprise.

When he opened his eyes this time George was smirking and as Rupert watched him, he spat water in an arch over to hit him in the face.

"George I can see you," Rupert said, aware as soon as it left him that he sounded priggish.

"I know, I'm on rather a mischievous spin I think."

Though Rupert loved the juvenile when it was on his terms, this game was entirely at his expense and he was a little bad tempered at George's childishness.

Rupert waded toward him meaning to tackle him.

As he approached slow, he stared at George, the water made his skin shiny enough to be seen in the moon light, highlighted arms and shoulders combining with the muted glow of his eyes. George began splashing, creating big waves of his whole body and collecting the displaced water into cupped hands which he pushed toward him.

His smile was wide and so white, glowing, and as Rupert's eyes adjusted to the light he could see George's pretty eyes stared at him strange and he pushed him.

Previous bathing escapades had been so civilised. Virginia had just talked. They had just shared sensations, lively old Virginia, who had none of George's strange initial reserve to the prospect of night nakedness, had sat still and her mind had become active from the jarring sensation.

George Mallory, quiet George was jumping around like some jumping bean.

George grabbed Rupert in retaliation for the push, his forearm hard around his shoulders, bringing the firm brace of his thighs against the back of Rupert's. Rupert struggled and George clung and they jostled together below the surface of the water where George's groin fitted to the curve of Rupert's behind and in no time at all, in thrall to touch, George was stiff between his legs.

They held pressed regardless for a beat longer than realisation, attempting to deny his reaction, breaths speeding, hearts pounding.

Brain scoured by many contrasting wants, but familiar enough with the occasion of an erection during a bathe, as well as that aroused between two bodies pressed in physical exercise Rupert did what he believed to be a kind thing and on instinct extended his arm behind him, straight laid it between their bodies, and when his hand found George's aroused prick he rubbed over it.

George jumped back from him in fright then began to move quick away to the bank. When there he stared back at Rupert for a second, then scrambled away, stumbling up, the globes of his naked arse flashing in the moonlight. A lithe streak of white on the shore George snatched his clothes back up into his hand with an exact flick and began to run back up to the Inn.

Rupert was startled by his violent reaction and his mind immediately slipped to the thoughts that perhaps one of the maids, the servants from the Inn would be prowling about their occupations at this time of the night, for they were dedicated sorts, and might spy George's nudity. Immediately his loyalty was with his friend. If those women weren't already in bed dreaming their insipid, contemptible dreams already, then Rupert considered that they deserved the sight they would receive.  
_

Rupert lingered less than a few moments before dressing making his way back to the Inn himself.  
_

There George sat in his clothes, one leg up, one arm bracing this knee and the free hand and attention on his foot.

"I'm sorry."

"Silly George. It's ok. I get them myself."

"I don't!"

"It's ok, they are rather natural, where else would be more likely than in all of nature's glory."

"I don't get them!" George huffed.

Bored of the prospect of an argument Rupert settled instead for saying.

"You have blood on you."

"I cut my foot. I was running on the stones without my shoes. I was lucky, nearly skidded onto my face." George looked up to him and there was a flicker of the amusement of earlier free, friendly, having forgotten what came between them.

"Let me look."

"It's ok I've stopped the bleeding."

Rupert came and sat beside him feeling a hard insistent lodge of arousal in his thoughts that was at odds with the innocent way that George looked to him, meek and polite and as if he didn't want to cause trouble. He began to connect the desire of his acquaintances, the sentences they had written in letters hymning George's physical beauty with the want of his own body.

"You're quite flushed," was all Rupert could think to say to him.

"I feel a bit ill and out of sorts with everything. Can you help me?"

His plea sounded out entirely guileless and innocent, a move of no thought, just need, approximating Rupert's own back in the water. Rupert felt natural to just respond to it. He placed hands on his shoulders briefly, smoothing out the muscle there, then bunching up the muscles at the top of his back he bent his head to kiss the back of George's neck. When he raised his head up again, George stared at him, hard. His eyes were a strange, lighter shade of blue than seemed strictly to fit with the darkness of his full curving eyebrows.

In most contexts they were terribly bewitching, but were especially so now that they were communicating such naked desire.

George's face without his concentrated carelessness settled stern and unimpressed with him. Though it was obvious that George did not really mean anything that would cause a slight, he reminded Rupert of a stern schoolteacher who had once whipped him for disobedience in his study with unintentional tenderness. Rupert had been so in love with that man, wanted to loose himself liquidly to him but the pain and the shame had been abominable and he'd kept himself back, apart.

This time he flowed forth.

Rupert set the warmth of his head against George's chest as though he were female and coaxing for that was how he felt in that moment. George got the message and sunk his hands into the flow of Rupert's too long hair. He stroked him kindly like he might a pet and Rupert sank against him head against his chest.

Rupert dared to think this was happening.

"Rupert?"

"Yes George," Rupert said as he raised his head and slow looked up.

"I imagine my wet clothes are seeping through the coverlet and there won't be the hours to air it out before the maid comes around to clean."

"You should take them off."

George awkwardly did just that, then after hanging his shirt and trousers over the door to dry, he paused a little over the issue of his underwear. Rupert looked at him, at the bold stiffness still pushing itself forth beneath the starched clothing. He thought to himself again that so many men had wanted to elicit this reaction from George. Beautiful men too. George had given little to very few whilst he had been an undergrad, of this Rupert was sure, for James often boasted of it, as much even as he showed a mocking, indifferent attitude to George's correspondence to him.

His torso was even and looked firm, sturdy, appealing, muscled from climbing Rupert thought, and soon his eyes fell back to his erection, strong as it was. Then Rupert noticed that his brows knitted together in a frown. Rupert felt as James once told him he had, overwhelmed by George's serious attitude.

George lisped hurt, "you said an erection was natural," clearly imagining that Rupert eyed his response with disapproval.

"It is."

"Do you have one?"

Rupert had no desire to confront his own erection with words. He stepped to where George stood, touched his chin, kissed his cheek, then mouthed into his neck up to his ear. George was gratifyingly responsive. It was mere kissing but he shuddered.

Rupert's ego swelled other parts of his anatomy.

Rupert focused on the sensual realities of his flesh, unable to touch his thing, or to even think on it anymore. He took his own clothing off down to his underwear.

George, being practical, returned with oil he carried with him for working the leather of his mountain boots. He pulled his underwear down and as Rupert kept eyes fixed to his face he immediately slicked himself up, apparently now only afraid at the prospect of not having sex.

Rupert reflected that George immediately thought he was in control with no sure reaction but gratitude.

"I have done this, just not from this end," Rupert said, laughing, pretending to find the whole thing amusing.

George didn't reply as such, only reached out to Rupert's hair and stroked it kindly once more.  
__

Rupert assembled on all fours and George entered him.

There came a vague burning, then a horrible sting that slowly burst into an impressive amount of pain, before snapping to nothing but the ache of memory. George was so prepared that there was hardly any resistance from his insides. He slunk deeper and deeper and it wasn't long before Rupert took him fully.

This was nothing like the time Rupert had had, when he, in the dark, had scarcely crept inside his partner than the other boy began to expel him again in pain.

George was a good lover. Rupert had no need whatsoever to protest whenever his angle caused him pain, nor worry when he withdrew from a point that caused him pleasure, because it was no time at all before he perfected his body to enter him better.

In time his thrusts touched a throb inside Rupert that sent a flush of crimson to his cheeks. Keyed into the shocked moan Rupert let off, George breathed harshly himself and rutted his hips shallowly against him, around inside him without withdrawing, hitting that spot inside him repeatedly.

It seemed at once to Rupert that such intense pleasure should have a fatigue, that it should leach away from him quickly before he'd got full measure of it, leaving him with only the disgusting relics of the sex act that caused it. It seemed to Rupert that this is what would happen because all life seemed to be about that loss, that reduction, but it did not. As long as George moved inside him but did not pull away the deep wave of pleasure rolled through him again and again. His awareness narrowed as gradually he had no choice but to accept that this pleasure was there, that it would remain. All existence began to lisp away beneath it. All Rupert felt was George and himself and not the way he usually felt himself, this was himself unquestioned, himself pure.

Sensations were all. He felt such love for the whole universe flood through him, there was nothing that stung him about any of it, nothing that had ever displeased or disrespected or deserted him that could compete with the extremity of the ecstasy he now had, so guttural and base and perfect.

The hot points of flame that had erupted on his cheeks burnt until they stung, Mallory's delicious grunts of concentration behind him, a sound choreographed well with the battering press of his hips against his backside, pushing his prick deep and naturally into his arse, making unquestioned the space it had created, with the continued burst of bliss in his guts.

Rupert grunted himself lost entirely to the hot sensations of his body. He bowed his head seeking the inner strength to deal with the delirium without hitting George to get off him, for it's sheer persistance had slipped from strange to accepted to beautiful and was now almost aversive.

"It is the spot?" Mallory asked late, although he had to know.

The breathless, exerted gasp that was his voice sent another thick judder of pleasure to Rupert's gut and it took a while for him to respond. Although Mallory could not see him, he smiled wide as he gasped the word.

"Yes."

"Good. James said there was a spot."

James? Something in Rupert seized silently.

That George was thinking of James at a moment like this, with him, when he was cumming so prettily and unquestionably beneath him outraged Rupert. It was all he could do not to jump away from him. He could not cry, not inclined to it but something in him just slipped away hurt. It switched him off. His body still being had from behind, threw up the same shudders of excitement but just like that they stopped reaching his prick. As it wilted slightly he grasped it in his hand and masturbated it until it stood firm again, then, weary with what he was doing stroked it until it ended wet over his fingers with little sense of release.

George noticed at once how he tensed up, noticed the furious action of his hand rubbing himself off suddenly when he'd been so exquisitely content, so loose and passive.

"Rupert is it ok?"

"Yes," he threw him, no longer even acknowledging to himself how slighted he felt.

"Did I do something wrong?

"No. Just finish will you please."

Having begun to withdraw more to enter him in a slamming sort of rhythm George finished inside Rupert just as he, morose, began coughing.  
_

"It helps the body I think. I've only done it once before but it helps the body tremendously afterward."

George was so serious as he spoke, making eye contact across the cotton of the bedspread, as though he were solemnly promising to Rupert that he was special. Precious and infuriating as always.

"You've done this before then?"

George nodded. Despite himself Rupert made plan to tell James about that.

"You're the second person."

"Really? Who?"

"You don't know him."

"It wasn't dear James?" George looked to the sneer in Rupert's voice.

"You know it wasn't." George said in a snipped tone of voice that assured him he would get no further details. God help George he was so serious, it was a wonder he wasn't a virgin really. Rupert yawned and stretched his limbs languid, he felt George's eyes infatuated upon him before he saw them.

"You're so beautiful. I'm hardening again," he said.  
Rupert resisted it.

There was a closeness to George's stare, a dark mocking as he lowered his hand beneath the sheets. Rupert laughed a little nervous at George's raw sexuality. George didn't care, all too quickly he was not there, blown out by his touching, shivering all over, breaths shaky.

Rupert refused to be aroused by the sight of him, but his mouth dried when he thought that this was how George had looked when he was full inside him. Longing but defensive he said.

"I could tell James. Anytime I wanted to I could."

He didnt know why he was saying it. He just wanted to make George react. George just smiled a curious, lazy, exhausted smirk for he was just on the edges of drunken, post orgasm sleep and his hand continued pumping away, so attractively.

"I could."

Rupert insisted, weary already of his own tantruming voice for it belonged to a child, but George would not listen.

Rupert whipped the cover off and straddled him and any pretense he made at not having an erection was at once demolished for moving made him feel it.  
Rupert set his fingertips lisping over George's face, his cheeks in that way James so often did. George, stroked his cock without care, eyes closed and didn't open them again. He made a tight grunt of confusion and disagreement as Rupert nudged the head of his cock, against his tight hole. George's face tightened into a wince and his mouth seized open in a wordless expression of disagreement as Rupert entered him but at the same time his thighs spread wider, opening himself to the penetration.

Rupert reached out to the oil then furiously fucked him and as he did he leant and said.

"I showed James that there was a spot."

There was a messy, boisterous anger in George's eyes for just a second before he sighed out, "Don't lie."

Rupert felt unsteady.

George didn't for a second believe a word he said. Here was a being immune to his peculiar habit for manipulation, he didn't seem to trust Rupert's beauty as others always seemed so readily to do. Rupert looked into his eyes trying to stare at him fiercesome and angry but it didn't work at all against George's beauteous smile so he lowered his forehead to touch his collarbone working his erection off inside him without wanting to look at the unintended triumph of his face, feeling a flare of painful pleasure not just from his cock in George's hot, tight channel, but also up inside him, as if the spot George had worked against whilst fucking him was bruised.

The pleasure was thick when George began to come beneath him, crying, submitting as prettily and well as he fucked, feeling no awkwardness with vulnerability or physicality as he sighed.

"Uh Rupert, beautiful Rupert, you are so good."

No match for the clenching of George's body around him Rupert lost all inside him in no time.

Practical George asked as soon as he was done, smiling a wide way.

"When are the Olivier sisters due to arrive?"

"6 hours or so."

"Ah we ought to sleep then, must ensure there is time for another bathe before they arrive. I'll go back to my room."  
Rupert shrugged but felt cold in his slumber when George took his weight from his side. The weight left the bed. Then returned

"Rupert. May I stay with you tonight, just until day light." George asked, his voice sounding fearful.

Rupert didn't know why but he smiled as he said yes.


End file.
